Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsSauber

Sauber being ‘prudent’ with development

Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn says the team is being “prudent” with its car development as it works to strengthen its financial position.

2014 see Sauber struggling financially, with the team’s plight highlighted by the legal proceedings from Giedo van der Garde who claimed Sauber had signed two race drivers - Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson - while he still had a valid contract to race this season. A strong start to 2015 saw an increase in talks with potential investors, but with no major new deals having come to fruition Kaltenborn says the team has been judging how important car development is in the short term.

Asked if the lack of progress with the car is frustrating, Kaltenborn replied: “I’m not too sure that it is really right to say that it is ‘frustrating’.

“I generally feel that if you are a business, you need to run it in a prudent way – you are not there to waste money particularly when you think you don’t have enough to do all that maybe you want to do, so you simply become wise about what you spend it on and whether it is worthwhile.

“We have seen times, when we were majority held by a manufacturer, how much were we doing there and is it always bring us up much? Not really, so I don’t think one has to follow the policy of ‘just because you can do it, you do it’, irrespective of what you gain. And if you are in the situation that probably smaller teams more or less all are, you jut think about the ratio of what you invest and what you gain out of it.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.